Despite clear skies, headlines about Garth Brooks' Saturday night (April 30) tour stop at LSU's Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, La. reference severe weather. That's because the noise generated by 102,000 fans during Brooks' performance of "Callin' Baton Rouge" registered as a small earthquake on a professor's seismograph.
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In addition, many concert-goers' Apple watches warned them that the stadium reached 95 decibels of sound during a singalong to one of the LSU athletic department's unofficial anthems.
An image shared on social media by Cody Worsham, LSU sports' chief brand officer, confirms that an earthquake charted around 9:30 p.m.
An LSU professor set up a seismograph machine tonight for the @garthbrooks concert in Baton Rouge.
Here's a snapshot of what it looked like when he played Callin' Baton Rouge.https://t.co/uuqI74fBak pic.twitter.com/ThjfEJ4q0y
— Cody Worsham (@CodyWorsham) May 1, 2022
To better establish the volume reached in Tiger Stadium, local ABC affiliate WBRZ reported that Sarah Rosemann, who lives about half a mile away, could hear the lyrics loud and clear.
Brooks' 1993 version of "Callin' Baton Rouge" —a Dennis Linde-penned song first recorded by the Oak Ridge Boys for 1978's Room Service— regularly blares at less extreme noise levels on LSU's campus during football games and other sporting events, so home team pride surely played a role in the "Garthquake."
It's the second time that an ovation in Tiger Stadium shook the campus. The LSU football team's game-winning fourth-down play against previously-unbeaten Auburn University on Oct. 8, 1988 — final score, 7-6— went down in SEC lore as the Earthquake Game.
Per the Washington Post, Saturday night marked Brooks' first time playing Baton Rouge in 24 years. An avid sports fan and former student-athlete at Oklahoma State University, Brooks loaded his Stadium Tour with stops at college and pro football destinations. In the coming weeks, he'll appear at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Ind. (May 7), Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati (May 13), Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. (May 21) and Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C. (July 15-16).
One day after his earth-shaking performance, Brooks appeared at the Country Music Hall of Fame's medallion ceremony in Nashville, Tenn., where he sang "Seven Spanish Angels" in celebration of new inductee Ray Charles.
